Many times Sensei has said you have to have a theme song for your projects. You may have certainly noticed that Sensei is old school, prog-rock and somewhat metal oriented. Spock’s Beard is a recent discovery and the group has direct roots with Transatlantic.

This latest album is a great source of inspiration, so if you have a ten minute walk ahead of, fire it up and it will get your head straight for serious productivity, creativity, or pure coding marathons.

Sensei recently gave up FogBugz. This was not because of FogBuz, as it is a great product. But Sensei realized that it was not meeting his needs. It was too much. When on the hunt, you can’t be slowed down, and sometimes you have to jettison the extra weight. To be fair, the context here is a prototyping project, where errors / foibles / new features need to be captured. FogBugz is great a teams, but it does require, well, too many clicks. You should always ask yourself this question: which James Bond do I want to be?

Which Bond gets the babe? Pretty easy choice. The unfettered thinker makes them swoon. The guy with the helmet …not so much.

Keeping It Real By Keeping It Simple

Yep – Sensei sounds like a whiny Apple-simplify-your-life-and-wear-a-black-turtle-neck Zen iPad fan boy. Well, that’s not right either. There’s just the right tools for the the right job. So when in the fight with the development environment, brain firing on all cylinders, Seseni uses Workflowy. You can quickly categorize your lists / sentences / thoughts as you go. Just typing, no modal dialog boxes, no creating an item, waiting for it to save, clicking, scrolling, more dialog boxes.

Before you attack, Sensei is not saying this will work for teams, for bug resolution, and other endeavors that FogBugz does very well. But it’s all about eliminating the tactics that get in the way of you achieving your goals. This is critical. And when prototyping you need as much room in your head as possible so you solve the bugs, but not spend more time tracking the bugs. Below is a sample. Issues and features, pretty easy. Click it to see the details.

So What? Well, How About Taking It a Step Further

Sensei hopes that the enterprising readers out there can take this idea and run with it: Why not create system that parses the format shown above? When you edit, each line gets a Guid. Then, start at the top level. Each item at that level is story or a deliverable, maybe broken down by screen or function. A child of each story will have an Issues or Features item, and the child items of Issues naturally belongs to Issues. All else would be ignored when converting to a database record, yet retained in your notes.

This would be your starting pointing. Because each of these items has an identifier, later you could parse them into a database format, assign people, etc. The point is that the starting point is easier, is more productive because you just type. That way your work gets done, and you feel more like him.

Of late, Sensei needs to keep a clear head. That has meant learning to segment ideas and really, really, really focus on streamlined features. This is hard. Not because Sensei has a plethora of great ideas. That would be a nice problem to have. Many times in software development you end up this guy:

This is the state where you have things you want to accomplish, yet even when you pair things down to the “essential”, other essential, critical factors must be taken into consideration before you create a mess. This is life calling, and that string which suspends that giant sword that you noticed hovering over your head is about to snap. There is a good chance that you need more discipline, better execution tactics, far better honed chops, you name the metaphor. Sensei has been at this game for over 22 years, and still the speed that thought takes to become reality is way too slow.

With great sarcasm you can remind your self that some of the best work lays ahead, but the reality is that you still need to fight to be fluent, you have to claw your way to a Zen state of mind / no-mind. So chose, the art of bushido or the art of BS. Or maybe work smarter and enjoy life.

Before Sensei leaves you, ponder this: does “being done” mean that you’ve dropped off a product but have to get on the phone in order to make changes, and maybe now that you are struggling why couldn’t you figure out to take time when it was more critical to be fluent with your productivity?

The Wolf Credo:
Respect the elders
Teach the young
Cooperate with the pack
Play when you can
Hunt when you must
Rest in between
Share you affections
Voice your feelings
Leave your mark.*

What have you done to nurture your team? Are you the resident Elvis, and if the newbies make the cut they’ll graduate from a Mort to be the next King, hand plucked by you from millions and millions of people? Can I get a little ka-ra-te with that?

What makes you an Elvis, and are you a bloated drunk Elvis at the end, or the bad-ass version 1970 version who can jump start anything? Elvis in 1970 practiced the Wolf Creedo. Watch the documentory Elvis the Way It Is 2001, just the first half hour. This short half hour will show you Elvis, after years of being away from touring, ready to return to touring again in attempts to re-start his career. The first half hour of the movie focuses on the few weeks of rehearsals before the debut concert. Elvis had a fluent, incredible means of communicating with his band members and back up singers. With a glance, a gesture, a wink, a new song would spring up. Maybe Elvis would say a quick word, hum a note, and suddenly a bass line would kick in, and not more than three beats later, the entire band and Elvis are playing a tune complete with improves. While playing Little Sister, Elvis nods, and issues “Get Back” and off the group goes playing Get back from the Beatles. Congruent would be best word to describe the synchronization that each member had.

Elvis nurtured that vibe. They all keyed off of him, for to the band he was Elvis, not the King. He lead by being a focal point, but not necessarily an ostentatious leader. When you watch the practice sessions where Elvis worked on the orchestrations of each song it is clear that he could communicate what he wanted, and worked with his band members to produce the product he envisioned.

But in order to function like this unit, each member has to practice. You, as pack leader, have to pick the scales, the arpeggios, the rudiments that you want to be second nature so that your team, the young ones and old warriors can produce what you want, fluently.

Indulge, play the song, drink in the message and go hug your kids, embrace your family, be thankful for your friends, team members, co-workers.

There is so many new things on the horizon. For those of us who are lucky enough to practice this technical craft called programming, we can be stymied by all the possiblities, the arguments and skirmishes. These de-rail you. Build a fortress against the distractions and ignore your fear of change by embracing the challenge of good arguments. It’s all a chance for you to improve.

When you arrive at work think of what ways you can engage with others. Can you practice your techniques in a better way? Recite the Wolf Creedo and end an argument. Better yet, start a new one in jest and revel in the ideas. Bang out some code and fight for the day. What new things can you add to your team’s arsenal if you inspire someone else? Are you leading or are you a suit sitting in a chair? Would someone ask you for help or think that you’re too involved in your own head to deign to talk to them? Have you built an empire above you or below you? Is your legacy more important than what you have truly done?

Okay, so you’re code was awful – but did someone else still benefit? Was your code perfect but never used? Was your ego hurt yet your company still profitable, keeping families fed? Did your mistakes help others learn?

What matters is that you engage. Most times it will be painful. Developers need serenity to produce but I’m telling you man you’re lucky if you have it. Life is full of the distractions and once you conquer them, you’ll find greater strength and battle hardened capability. Work at it. Revel in it, share it. Be grateful and humble. Win and go home to the ones you love. Technology is great, but you as a friend, mother, father, co-worker, neighbor, dude in line at Starbucks or grandma at church are even greater.

You’ve asked for it – well you didn’t actually, BUT HERE IT IS ANYWAY!! Yeahhh! Music to pump you up. Rev your ActiveEngine to these tunes, babes, and get stuff done. Decisively. As in total victory.

There’s a new page to the site, Pay the Rent with Rock. Here is the music that get’s me through. It’s powered by Grooveshark. Post a comment with a suggestion if you like. If it cranks and you’re lucky, I’ll include it. Describe what scenario your song helps you pull things off, helps you get things done, cranks, whatever.

As a corollary to the post Ego is the Mind Killer, a practitioner of ActiveEngine principles will always seek the basics and routine to liberate the mind. Constraints are the best way to innovate, to turn the puzzle upside down, read the paragraph from end to beginning. Constraints force you to make a decision and take action, innovate further why attaining your goal.

Your skill built from years of hard work, trials of failure and above all the alacrity to achieve through struggle will shape your mind to solve problems more quickly. Having the discipline to face criticism when it comes head on tempers your talents like fine steal. Forgery of steel is violent, harsh, but what is born from pounding and fire endures.

Just because you solve something once, doesn’t mean you can not optimize later. Analysis paralysis delays validation of your skills. Fail early, regroup, then win. Maybe that doesn’t happen until the fifth time. Who cares – you’re on deadline so be assured you will be around to try again. When you deliver you actually get the freedom to experiment later on.